Ivan Boesky, famed trader in 1980s insider trading scandal, dies at 87

Ivan Boesky, the infamous insider trader whose name became synonymous with financial greed and helped inspire the fictional character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film “Wall Street,” has died at his home in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. He was 87.

His daughter, Marianne Boesky, confirmed to CNN on Monday that he died in his sleep.

“A dedicated and loving father above all else. A beautiful soul who inspired me to work hard, care harder, and always remain curious,” read a caption on a Monday Instagram post by the account associated with Marianne Boesky’s art gallery.

Boesky famously said in a 1986 commencement speech at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, that “greed is healthy,” inspiring in part to Gekko’s “greed is good” speech.

Nicknamed “Ivan the Terrible” on a 1986 Time Magazine cover, Boesky profited from the corporate takeover boom in the 1980s, using insider information to receive advanced information on pending deals.

When investigators began catching whiff of his activities, along with that of “junk bond king” Michael Milken, he agreed to cooperate with the federal government as they investigated insider trading on Wall Street, which had become a concern for the SEC by the early 1980s.

He recorded calls and meetings, including with Milken, and taught investigators about stock manipulation, takeover bids and corporate raids, according to the SEC Historical Society.

He pleaded guilty in 1986 to insider trading and was sentenced to three years of prison and fined $100 million, half of which went to returning the profits he made from insider trading and the other half as a civil penalty.

Boesky was barred from securities trading for the rest of his life.

The son of a delicatessen owner in Detroit, Boesky began his Wall Street career as a stock analyst at New York investment bank L.F. Rothschild after graduating from the Detroit College of Law in 1964. By 1975, he would open up his own brokerage firm, Ivan F. Boesky & Company, which his wife’s family helped finance. By the spring of 1985, he was reportedly the highest-paid broker on Wall Street with a net worth over $280 million (roughly $820 million in 2024).

He is survived by his wife Ana, his five children and four grandchildren.

This report has been updated with additional details.

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